Merry: Consciousness of Rights (or Not) Through Experience of Law
In “Rights Talk and the Experience of Law: Implementing Women’s Human Rights to Protection from Violence”, Sally Engle Merry examines how one begins to see their problems within the framework of human rights. Focusing on gender-based violence in romantic and familial relationships, Merry and her assistants interview a number of women and men on their experiences with law enforcement, the judicial system, and advocacy groups to illustrate how these interactions bring awareness, or does not, to their consciousness of human rights and their understanding of how rights are applicable to the violence they have experienced (or perpetrated).
The interviews take place in Hilo Hawai’i in the early 1990s, across a broad range of ethnicities but mostly within a lower rung of economic class. They find that the interactions with law enforcement and the judicial system greatly affect the victims’ ability to look at their selves and their situations through the lens of human rights. For example, in many cases, the police officers responding to domestic violence cases were either chummy with the attacker or dismissed the women’s complaints. The result was the woman believing that they were not entitled to protection. On the other hand, many of the judges in the examples given were supportive of the women, resulting in the women developing a sense of self which acknowledged that they were due protection under the umbrella of human rights.
While the above may seem like common sense – it seems evident to me that one’s interactions with law enforcement and the judicial system will affect how one views themselves in relation to the law and rights – Merry’s research and essay is quite interesting, as it is yet another example of the public versus private sphere and how the division affects the rights of women. Merry speaks to the women developing a new sense of self, one that is not necessarily defined by their relationships with their partners or families, rather one that is defined as a subject of the state, one that is owed protection. This transition moves the conversation around gender-based violence in the home from the private domain into the public domain, allowing not only visibility but protection.
Merry does touch on the economics of both the victims and the attackers throughout her paper and spends a small paragraph on how those with the resources have different experiences. It would be interesting to investigate this further. On the one hand, one may think that having additional resources would allow victims easier access to lawyers and assistance. On the other, Merry makes a point of recognizing that many of these cases remain private due to the financial resources on both sides. Given that the consciousness of rights is tied to the private/public sphere division, it would be rather interesting to further investigate the impact of keeping these cases private has on the women’s ability to view their situation through the lens of human rights.
